Residual Forces

There’s a backroom brew haha going on about earmarks in Congress. Now most voters will probably remember how they pulled the lever for “Change” in Washington 2 Novembers ago. They also may be surprised that earmarks appear to be on the rise, and more shadowy than the days of Abramoff.

Well, nothing in Washington has changed, well save turning over the gavels to the party of binge spending. The whole ordeal has started with Bush’s signing of the Federal spending bill which included some 9000+ earmarks worth billions and billions and billions of dollars. This was a bill Bush had to sign as it was an omnibus bill to cover all, since Democrats failed to pass spending bills individually.

Well, members of Congress just couldn’t keep their hands out of the taxpayer’s cookie jar. Despite their personal pork projects being excluded from the final bill, they added them post passage in committee and then sent the bill to the President. The President is or has directed Federal agencies to ignore any and all earmarks that were not part of the original passed legislative language.

You see, the committee report added some $7 billion dollars of pork projects (IE appropriations) that were officially voted on by Congress. You may remember the flap over the 35W bridge funding that was promised with in weeks of the collapse, but didn’t officially get appropriated until this bill was passed. Saying it is spent, also requires a vote to actually spend the money.

Well both Democrats and Republicans in Congress are a bit upset that their corrupted absolute power is being challenged, er Checked, by the Executive branch. But there is one Senator who seems to remember that oath they took when they were sworn in.

“I’ve yet to read the part of the Constitution that gives Congress the right to secretly waste billions of tax dollars on a bridge to nowhere and hippie museums,” DeMint

This isn’t getting any mainstream media attention, because this pretty much would prove the “cleaning up Washington” campaign rhetoric from the 2006 Democrats was a bunch of B as in B and S as in S. With the 2008 Elections being so much more about if the Republicans can retake the Congress, it is no wonder that the media is burying this story.

Uber bloggers like Captain Ed are all over it thankfully.

Does anyone know where MN’s bipartisan Senate delegation Coleman and Klobuchar are on this one?